MurderousToaster said:
So, I was just wondering, in the age of the internet and other such widely available information technologies, do any of you guys read magazines?
Personally, I haven't had a subscription to a magazine since the PS2, but I occasionally pick up a copy of Xbox World 360, Total PC Gamer or PC Format.
I subscribed to Total PC Gaming as it was such a quality magazine and had a great indie and MMO section, along with covering games mods and hardware. Typically, with my third issue (I'd signed up to get 3 issues free for subscribing) I get a letter saying they're killing it off and this will be the last issue. I was gutted as it had a rare quality.
Seems almost all other PC or gaming magazines are either horribly laddish, like some kind of FHM for games, or they're like EDGE and so, I don't even know what it is, a combination of huge egos and a belief they're so much better than normal gamers. Oh and when I'm paying about £5 for a magazine with no cover discs, how about not having the entire second half of the magazine being either ads or the recruitment section?
I think there's a huge market for a 'Computer Active' style magazine for gaming, not in the sense that we need it to be entry level info for newcomers, but in the sense of having a weekly magazine under £2.
I wish I could add a poll of my own, so I'll just ask, out of 10, how much do cover discs sway your buying decision? I personally found it rare that they'd offer anything I couldn't go get myself, they were useful before broadband, when a 100mb demo might take 2 weeks to download, but now it's just not needed.
You know what might work? (Watch the contradictions happen right before your eyes) Take the magazine Retro Gamer - all about old games and consoles. Add a pound, and add a disc with a couple of older games, made to work on windows 7.
I'd say if you can shift 50,000 copies ( I have no idea about magazine sales ), 20p per copy goes to the owners of the games, I imagine a split of £10,000 to do a lil work on a game that doesn't sell any more would entice many people back to the keyboard.
Who here wouldn't like an updated, fully working bunch of old games being released monthly with an interesting magazine attached? Elite with issue 1 please, followed maybe by Dungeon Master.
There's a ton of people out there who don't know about abandonware, patches, emulators and the like, and they've got spending money.